Former American Family Association Attorney Says The Christian Right Is Paranoid And Perverse

How Homosexuality Ruined The “Religious Right”

By Joseph R. Murray, II

Longshoreman Eric Hoffer recognized that many great American movements were borne of a noble cause, grew up to be a lucrative business, and ended up becoming a racket. Such is the dangerous Catch-22 of public interest politics and such is the tale of America’s Christian Right lobby.

When students of political science study the demise of the Christian Right years from now, the focus will most assuredly be on gay rights.

After the Christian Right tapped out the pro-life issue, the captains of Christian industry needed a new sales pitch to keep the coffers filled. These folks thought they saw the light in 2003 when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared a fundamental right to same-sex marriage.

This decision was a god-send for a Christian right that was always giddy to portray the judiciary as an unelected, out-of-touch super-legislature that imposed its minority will on the majority of the people.

Shortly after Massachusetts made history, all eyes turned to then-San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom’s decision to permit same-sex couples to say “I do.”

I was on the front lines working with the American Family Association as a staff attorney when Newsom made history in the City by the Bay after he gave clerks the green light to issue same-sex marriage licenses. The Christian right was drooling with delight thinking the maverick mayor had gone off the proverbial cliff. History, however, would show it was the Christian Right that joined Thelma and Louise in the backseat of their convertible.

As a staff attorney, I was able to see firsthand how the Religious Right operated. I first worked with AFA after I was selected to be in the inaugural class of the then Alliance Defense Fund’s Blackstone Fellowship. The Fellowship was designed to select the best and brightest budding Christian lawyers to train them to fight the culture war in courtrooms across America.

Such training did not prepare me for the reality of how the Evangelical “Christian” political machine operated, especially when the battle over marriage erupted.

At the time Newsom and Massachusetts opened a new front in the culture war, polls suggested that opposition to gay rights, especially marriage rights, was a winning issue for the Christian machine. While “Will and Grace” entertained the nation, the concept of marriage equality still generated a lukewarm response.

Moreover, the Christian Right had invested heavily in a propaganda machine that specialized in promulgating unjust stereotypes. Instead of letting the flock see gay couples as the neighbors next door, the Christian Right made it a point to portray all gays with the wildest pictures they could find from the Castro.

It was a brilliant strategy, for if groups like AFA could scare the faithful with pictures that portrayed the gay community in the worst light, it could frame the debate as one of deviancy versus decency. There were two problems with this strategy, though:

First, in order for the campaign to succeed the Right had to forsake the very Christian principles it claimed to be protecting. In typical fashion, a few Ben Franklins made it much easier for them to put profit over principle.

Second, the strategy would only work if the Christian Right could force gays, as well as those Christians that supported them, into the closet. It was the second problem that would result in the demise of the Christian right.

Aside from the hypocritical tactics of these right-wing groups, competition and distrust erupted among the various groups themselves. Though they claimed to be united for a single cause, they often had internal disputes and rivalries, and rather than rally behind winnable legal cases being litigated by their peers, these groups often focused instead on outdoing each other.

Why? Because high profile cases meant high-volume dollars. It was morality driven by money.

When I worked at AFA there was an intense rivalry between the AFA and ADF. There was a belief that ADF was trying to strong-arm the various religious groups under its umbrella so it could control the money and the message. There was a real fear that ADF was poised to steamroll over every Christian Right group, which it largely did.

To demonstrate how paranoid and perverse the Christian Right machine became, I was booted out of ADF’s Blackstone Fellowship because I would not sign a loyalty pledge. Just two years after Blackstone was created, there was concern that ADF was using the images and stories of the Blackstone fellows without their permission and for fundraising unrelated to the Fellowship.

When confronted, ADF demanded that current fellows sign a loyalty pledge or face excommunication. This author, as well as a handful of other principled folks, gladly chose excommunication.

While these largely Evangelical groups fought with each other, there also remained a distrust between Evangelicals and Catholics. During an AFA devotional I attended, the organization’s spokesman talked about his recent mission trip to Spain. Specifically, he stated that mission work was needed in Spain because the country did not have many Christians, just a whole lot of Catholics.

Make no mistake: the Christian right was poised to bring “God’s work” to a whole new level at the beginning of this century, but the dysfunction and distrust ingrained into these groups, their greed, their envy, and their pride, got in the way. Also working against the “gay gold rush” they perceived was the fact that society was changing despite their efforts. Thank God for both of these things.

Recognizing its own colossal failure and the ever-growing acceptance of LGBT people in society, the Christian right is in a race against the clock, fighting against its own irrelevancy.

Look at the lunacy pouring out of the Christian right. Don Wildmon claims to defend marriage, but endorses twice divorced, three times married Newt Gingrich for president. Mat Staver and Matt Barber of the Liberty Counsel are out there invoking Jerry Sandusky to support the medieval notion that you can “pray the gay away.”

And, of course, Bryan Fischer is like a drunken uncle at a wedding who must continually be outrageous in hopes that someone will pay attention.

Why is this happening? Because the Christian right doubled down on gay discrimination and lost.

Generations of new Americans are growing up in a nation in which their aunt or uncle is gay or their best friend has gay parents. The issue of homosexuality, thus, is no longer a Biblical billy-club detached from the human concept.

Moreover, scores of Christians from across the nation are tired of this small, but albeit loud, minority defining their faith for them in the public square. This is why the Not All Like That (NALT) Christians Project has the potential to be the final nail in the Christian Right’s coffin.

In order for the Christian Right to survive, it has to have a monopoly on morality. The debate has to be one of “us v. them.” This is how culture wars work.

NALT, however, will be a devastating blow the Christian Right. Frankly, all the videos pouring into NALT re-affirm one basic fact –- the Christian Right no longer can claim to have a monopoly on morality.

If you can be a strong Christian and still affirm the human dignity of gay folks, what relevance is there for groups like AFA? If gays are no longer the boogeyman, why should supporters send checks to fight what they no longer fear?

The answer is that they won’t and I welcome my former colleagues to a Waterloo of their own making. More importantly, I encourage others like me, LGBT and LGBT-affirming Christians from both sides of the political divide, to stand with me and speak in love by contributing videos to the NALT Christians Project. This project isn’t about “us vs. them.” This is about whether Christianity will be a force of division and hatred, or whether the voices of love, acceptance and inclusion will prevail.

Join me in making sure it’s the latter.

Peter Sprigg And The Values Victim Caucus

by Wayne Besen, Truth Wins Out:

Wine may represent the blood of Jesus in church, but whine is the Religious Right’s drink of choice these days.


Having lost the culture war, their latest tactic is to falsely cast themselves as martyrs who are defending the faith and free speech against an increasingly totalitarian majority. Perhaps the biggest crybaby is the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg. He seems to believe that anyone who stands up to his vitriolic hate speech and toxic lies is guilty of intolerance.

However, what professional victims like Sprigg really object to, are people who are no longer cowed into silence and finally standing up to bullies. There was a time, not too long ago, when Sprigg could spew misinformation and get away with it. He could demonize gays and dehumanize atheists and there was little opposition.

Thankfully, this dynamic has changed. Sprigg and his fanatical fibs are regularly met by facts that expose his ugly bigotry. As a result, support for his incoherent and irrational positions on social issues has eroded. He sees this as a great conspiracy against fundamentalist Christians, rather than acknowledging that the American people have soundly rejected his bogus arguments.

A CNN article by John Blake summarizes the paranoia of the Values Victim Caucus:

"We’ve heard of the “down-low” gay person who keeps his or her sexual identity secret for fear of public scorn. But Sprigg and other evangelicals say changing attitudes toward homosexuality have created a new victim: closeted Christians who believe the Bible condemns homosexuality but will not say so publicly for fear of being labeled a hateful bigot."


Sprigg is not a victim, but an aggressive victimizer. The only reason he is labeled a hateful bigot is because he has engaged in hateful and bigoted speech. Laughably, the FRC spokesman couches his disdain for gay and lesbian people in the language of love.

According to the CNN article:

"Sprigg, from the Family Research Council, says his condemnation of homosexual conduct does not spring from intolerance but a desire to protect gays from harmful conduct."


The extreme right seems to forget that the Internet exists and their quotes are recorded for posterity, which make them look like a horses posterior. If Sprigg is so concerned about the health of my family, why did he tell MSNBC host Chris Matthews in 2008 that he wanted to “export” LGBT people from the United States of America? Why did he say on the same show, “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior.”

How is persecution and banishing people from the country where they were born, or imprisoning them, good for their physical or mental health? Such inconsistency and insincerity is why people have rejected the message of fake Christians like Sprigg.

If one wants to see real Christians who are attacked for their beliefs, look at those who are bold enough to stand up for LGBT equality. Pastors who act on their moral consciences and stand with their gay parishioners are often castigated and lose their churches. Anyone who doesn’t adhere to the party line is attacked or excommunicated.

For example, former Green Bay Packers safety LeRoy Butler tweeted his support for Jason Collins, the NBA player who came out as gay. His gesture of Christian love cost him $8,500 in fees from a church who pulled the plug on an upcoming speaking gig.

Why isn’t Sprigg defending the free speech of this particular Christian? Were Butler’s words not conservatively correct enough for Sprigg’s taste?

Last September, Maryland Rep. Emmett Burns wrote the owner of the Baltimore Ravens and demanded they silence linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo, who spoke out in favor of marriage equality.

Where was Sprigg when Ayanbadejo’s free speech was under attack?

In a column that discusses the marginalization of mainstream Christians, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni asks an important question:

"But what about the morals and the God of people whose religions exhort them to be inclusive and to treat gays and lesbians with the same dignity as anyone else?

…there’s a religious center. A religious left. There are Christian moderates and Christian liberals: less alliterative and less dogmatic, but perhaps no less concerned with acting in ways that reflect moral ideals. We should better acknowledge that and them….And we should stop equating conventional piety with certain issues only and sexual morality above other kinds."


People like Sprigg aren’t satisfied simply being one of a cacophony of voices in the public square. They believe it is their God-given right to have dominion and their opinions are more important than everyone else’s. Such complainers are not victims of less speech, as they falsely claim. They are simply on the losing end of more speech, with the vast majority of people rejecting their debunked theories and archaic ideas.

The Right’s Righteous Frauds

By Frank Bruni for The New York Times:

Say what you will about Bristol Palin, she’s a quick study. It didn’t take her long to master the ways of her elders on the censorious right and decide that personal circumstance and past error needn’t prevent someone from claiming righteous leadership. Uncle Rush must be proud.

Soon after President Obama stated support for same-sex marriage, Bristol publicly weighed in. Because, you know, the world was on tenterhooks.

In a blog post she focused on the reference that Obama made to his daughters — and to the same-sex parents of some of the girls’ friends.

“It would’ve been helpful for him to explain to Malia and Sasha that while her friends (sic) parents are no doubt lovely people, that’s not a reason to change thousands of years of thinking about marriage,” wrote Bristol, making her heady debut as the new Dr. Spock for a nascent millennium. She added that “in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home. Ideally, fathers help shape their kids’ worldview.”

Fathers like...Levi Johnston? It’s with him that she conceived her child — out of wedlock, at the age of 17 — and by most accounts, his relationship with her and the Palin family isn’t any warmer than Juneau in January. A mother/father home is not what he and Bristol have succeeded in creating.

What’s more, she has made sure that their son, Tripp, will at some point be treated to a worldview-shaping image of Dad as something akin to a date rapist. That’s the description of him immortalized in her memoir, one of her many efforts to monetize her surname. It recounts the loss of her virginity as a result of getting drunk and blacking out in the company of Levi, who pounced. What a gift that narrative is to Tripp, now being hauled into a TV reality show, “Bristol Palin: Life’s a Tripp,” already in production. Little children are known to thrive in such environments.

I hesitated before picking on Bristol because she’s an easy target. It’s like shooting moose from a helicopter flying low over the tundra.

But she so perfectly distills the double standards and audacity of so many of our country’s self-appointed moralists and supposed traditionalists: hypocrites whose own histories, along with any sense of shame, tumble out the window as soon as there’s a microphone to be seized or check to be cashed. 

She proves that they’re not going away anytime soon — a new generation rises! — and that they haven’t been daunted by the ridicule justly heaped on Newt Gingrich during the Republican primaries, when he dared to cast himself as a religious conservative.

Certainly Rush thunders on. Last week he bellowed that Obama had decided to “lead a war” on traditional marriage. Seems to me Limbaugh started those hostilities long ago, if not with his first divorce then certainly with his second and third.

For entertainment at Wedding No. 4, to a woman 26 years younger than he is, he hired Elton John (who very questionably took the gig). Gays shouldn’t be allowed to tie the knot, but they sure can carry a tune.

More interesting than the tired, press-a-button condemnations from Bristol and Rush was Mitt Romney’s comportment. He didn’t hasten to turn same-sex marriage into a wedge issue, the way Rick Santorum urged him to, or use his commencement speech at Liberty University to fan the flames of hellfire.

He instead held back a bit, no doubt partly because his need at this particular juncture, as he recovers from the compromising and brutalizing primaries, is to pivot to the center, not cling to the right. I think Obama and his tacticians counted on as much.

And I think that the extent to which Romney continues to hold back will have enormous consequence for the Republican Party’s destiny.

Within its uppermost ranks are many champions of small government who squirm at the small-mindedness of the scowling theocrats in an increasingly uneasy coalition. These fiscal conservatives take advantage of the religious right’s political muscle but have reservations about its hectoring piety, and their own views on social issues are often moderate or somewhat liberal. Recall that Republican money played a pivotal role in the successful campaign for same-sex marriage in New York.

It came from donors who don’t want to see Romney take up an anti-gay mantle and who understand that a reputation for intolerance and bigotry imperils the future of the party, which they would like to orient away from stone throwers in glass houses. They’re Rush-fatigued. Palin-weary.

Bristol’s recent parenting advice to the Obamas extended into the realm of TV. She seemed to question whether they were watching “too many episodes of ‘Glee.’ ”

“Life’s a Tripp,” starring a single mom who once sold a family revelation to Us Weekly, will be more edifying, I’m certain. And it will showcase a woman who’s a shining testament to conventional, old-fashioned families.

The Lies of Religious Extremists

from Truth Wins Out:

Marc Mutty, who ran Yes on 1 in Maine, will be featured in a documentary later this year on the campaign to repeal marriage in that state, and in the trailer, he’s on camera admitting what we all already know — they lied in their campaign. They always lie:

“We use a lot of hyperbole and I think that’s always dangerous,” says Mutty during a Yes on 1 strategy session, at the time on leave from his job as public affairs director for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Maine.

“You know, we say things like ‘Teachers will be forced to (teach same-sex marriage in schools)!’ ” he continues. “Well, that’s not a completely accurate statement and we all know it isn’t, you know?”

“No,” interjects a woman off-camera. “We don’t say that.”

“Let’s look back at our ads and see what we say,” Mutty persists. “And I think we use hyperbole to the point where, you know, it’s like ‘Geez!’ “

Indeed! I would go so far as to say that not only Mutty, but the entire Religious Right, flat makes sh*t up, their hatred of gay people runs so deep. More than that, they seem to know that facts are not on their side:

“I know we need to do what we have to do — not only slam people over the head with a two-by-four, but a two-by-four with nails sticking out of it,” he says. “And it’s nuts … unfortunately, I think it’s a lousy approach. But it’s the only thing we’ve got — it’s the only way. That’s the way campaigns work.”

Well, like I said, we already know they’re liars, but it’s refreshing to see one of them admit it, and perhaps, it seems from the article, feel a little bit of remorse over it. Like any good Christian, though, Mutty’s biggest regret is that he was caught on camera saying potty words, because, as we all know, potty words are worse than lying about an entire class of people in order to deny them and their families constitutional rights.

American 'Family' Association Misuses Religion to Infuse Politics with BIGOTRY

An Iowa Stop in a Broad Effort to Revitalize the Religious Right

By Eric Eckholm for The New York Times, April 2, 2011:

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — Hundreds of conservative pastors in Iowa received the enticing invitation. Signed by Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and 2008 presidential contender, it invited the pastors and their spouses to an expenses-paid, two-day Pastors’ Policy Briefing at a Sheraton hotel.

Nearly 400 Iowa ministers and many of their spouses accepted, filling a ballroom here on March 24 and 25. Through an evening banquet and long sessions, they heard speakers deplore a secular assault on evangelical Christian verities like the sanctity of male-female marriage, the humanity of the unborn and the divine right to limited government.

The program, sponsored by a temporary entity called the Iowa Renewal Project, featured several superstars of the Christian right as well as four possible Republican contenders for president. It was the latest of dozens of free, two-day conventions in at least 14 states over the past several years, usually with Mr. Huckabee listed as a co-sponsor, that have been attended by nearly 10,000 pastors who have spread the word in their churches and communities.

These meetings are part of a largely quiet drive to revitalize the religious right by drawing evangelical pastors and their flocks more deeply into politics — an effort given new energy by what conservative church leaders see as the ominous creep of laws allowing same-sex marriage and their sense that America is, literally, heading toward hell.

The Iowa pastors heard David Barton, a Christian historian, argue that the country was founded as explicitly Christian and lament that too few evangelicals get out and vote. They heard Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker and like Mr. Huckabee a possible 2012 presidential candidate, say that constitutional liberties like the right to bear arms were ordained by God. They heard how to promote “biblically informed” political advocacy by churchgoers within the confines of federal tax law.

The other possible candidates who spoke were Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota.


Support from many of the pastors in the audience here helped Mr. Huckabee, an evangelical minister, win the Iowa Republican caucuses in 2008. He had been the only candidate to appear at a pastors’ meeting before the Republican caucuses and went on to gain a surprise victory, with 60 percent of the caucus voters describing themselves in exit polls as evangelicals.

This year, many more would-be contenders are making plays for support.

Mr. Huckabee, of course, was warmly welcomed back at the event here as he declared: “We face a spiritual war in this country. Let this weekend be a time when you say, ‘We will not fail, and America will not fall.’ ”

He and the other Republican speakers were careful not to sound too much like candidates in this officially nonpartisan forum, instead emphasizing the threats to conservative Christian values and the need for churches to be engaged. Mr. Gingrich, for one, described the “Rediscovering God in America” films he has made with his wife, Callista, and said America is exceptional because its founding documents enshrine rights “endowed by our creator.”

He told the crowd that it was their Christian duty to fight for the “truth,” exposing threats like overreaching by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Obama health care law that may put the country “on the road to dictatorship.”

Mr. Barbour pledged relentless opposition to abortion and accused liberals of trying to remove religion from politics. Ms. Bachmann challenged the pastors to “be the voice of freedom.”

The organizer and, to many, the unsung hero of this effort to mobilize pastors is David Lane, a 56-year-old born-again Christian from California.

“What we’re doing with the pastor meetings is spiritual, but the end result is political,” Mr. Lane said in a rare interview, outside the doors of the Iowa meeting. “From my perspective, our country is going to hell because pastors won’t lead from the pulpits.”

Mr. Lane shuns publicity as he crosses the country forming local coalitions under names like Renewal Project and securing outside financing to put on the pastor conferences. Something of a stealth weapon for the right, he has also stepped in to assist in special-issue campaigns, like the successful effort in Iowa last year to unseat three State Supreme Court justices who had voted to allow same-sex marriage.


Mr. Lane first started arranging pastor conferences in Texas and California in the 1990s, but the effort has grown in the last five years. The meetings, which cost many tens of thousands of dollars, have been largely paid for by the Mississippi-based American Family Association, he said.

The association, founded by the Rev. Donald E. Wildmon, is known for its strident condemnation of same-sex marriage and considers homosexuality to be “immoral, unnatural and unhealthy,” said Bryan Fischer, its director of issue analysis. Mr. Fischer said the association was a co-sponsor of the pastor meetings and maintained e-mail contact with 40,000 to 60,000 pastors nationwide, a list that is expanding.

In 2010, Mr. Lane said, he organized pastor meetings in Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Carolina and Tennessee, as well as two in Iowa. He expects to revisit some of the same states this year, several of which are important battlegrounds in presidential politics.

Compared with the 1980s, when it was dominated by prominent leaders like the Revs. Jerry Falwell with his Moral Majority and Pat Robertson with the Christian Coalition, the religious right is now decentralized, said Mark DeMoss, who was a close aide to Mr. Falwell.

“But it’s not true to suggest that it’s dead and gone,” he said. Mobilizing pastors has remained important, with “people out there like David Lane, whose names we may not know, who are contributing to a large fabric of involvement,” said Mr. DeMoss, who runs a Georgia public relations company for Christian causes.

The event here was reminiscent of the Christian Coalition’s Road to Victory conventions, which were must-stops for Republican presidential candidates. But with the spread of megachurches emphasizing personal salvation, fewer evangelical pastors than in the 1980s, over all, are deeply involved in politics, said Ralph Reed, who ran the Christian Coalition and is chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition.

He said it was natural that a movement’s initial phase, with a few charismatic leaders, would give way to one dominated by political operatives.

Mr. Lane and his supporters are hoping to rekindle the force of the church. Addressing the Iowa meeting, Mr. Huckabee lavished praise on Mr. Lane for “bringing pastors together so they go back to their pulpits and light them on fire with enthusiasm, to make America once again the greatest country on earth under God.”

In perhaps no state has the mobilization of churches paid off more than in Iowa, where evangelical Christians now dominate the state Republican Party and presidential caucuses even though their share of the population, one in four, is at the national average.

Republican leaders and pastors call Mr. Lane the unheralded mastermind of the campaign last year to unseat the State Supreme Court justices. The Rev. Jeffrey Mullen, 47, the pastor of Point of Grace Church in Waukee, Iowa, had not been involved politically, he said. But he was jolted by the court’s 2009 decision permitting same-sex marriage, which he called not only morally wrong but also a usurpation of power.

“God used David Lane and his sphere of influence to bring together all the elements” of the campaign to oust the justices, Mr. Mullen said. Mr. Lane secured hundreds of thousands of dollars from the political action committees of Mr. Gingrich and the American Family Association and devised a broad strategy, bringing together the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, which provided voter guides to churches, and the Iowa Family Policy Center, which got 834 ministers to sign a letter stating that marriage was established by God as between a man and a woman.

Beyond presidential politics, the main focus of Iowa conservatives next year, many said, will be taking control of the State Senate, which has blocked their drives for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and stronger anti-abortion laws.

Like all the pastor meetings, the recent one in Iowa was not advertised and was closed to the news media. But the speeches were streamed on the Web site of the American Family Association, and highlights were broadcast online on March 26 to crowds gathered in 177 churches around the country by a California-based group called United in Purpose, which shares the goal of drawing pastors into politics.


Speakers at the conference described what they called the biblical roots of American government and a rich early history of political engagement by the clergy. They exhorted the pastors and their flocks not only to fight harder to have same-sex marriage and abortion banned but also to follow God’s word by opposing activist judges, high taxes, explicit sex education and assaults on private property rights.

A pastor from Louisiana described the political costs of sexual scandals in the church and recommended that pastors avoid temptation by never being alone in a room with women who are not their wives.

The audience heard how to push their flocks to register and vote along “biblical principles” without running afoul of tax laws against endorsing candidates from the pulpit.

The Rev. Michael Demastus, 40, pastor of the Fort Des Moines Church of Christ, said he was energized: “I came out of there like Seabiscuit out of the gate, ready to do even more.”

Right Wing Watch: The "Religious" Right Lies About Hate Crimes

As Senate Prepares to Take Up Hate Crimes Bill, Far Right’s Inflammatory Claims Should Not Be Taken Seriously

Lies should be refuted as a matter of record,but demonstrably false and ridiculous attacks deserve to be dismissed


from People for the American Way:

Anti-gay organizations have been fighting the steady advance of federal hate crimes legislation with rhetoric that is increasingly unhinged from reality. When the U.S. House of Representatives passed a hate crimes bill on April 29 with a bipartisan 74-vote margin, Religious Right leaders and some of their congressional allies were inspired to new heights (or depths) of literally incredible accusations.


Now, as the U.S. Senate prepares to take up its version of a hate crimes Bill, right-wing leaders are trying to crank up the volume even further on their propaganda campaign. Emblematic is a May 6 diatribe by Focus on the Family’s James Dobson:

As I'm recording this video greeting, there's a so-called hate crimes bill that's working its way through the congress that contains no adequate safeguards to protect the preaching of God's word. Because the liberals in Congress would not define sexual orientation, we have to assume that protection under the law will be extended to the 30 sexual disorders identified as such by the American Psychiatric Association. Let me read just a few of them: bisexuality, exhibitionism, fetishism, incest, necrophilia, pedophilia, prostitution, sexual masochism, urophilia, voyeurism, and bestiality. Those are just a few. And I have to ask, have we gone completely mad?

Religious Right leaders have gotten undeserved support for their accusations from some members of Congress – notably Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) – and from right-wing media outlets and figures, like Fox’s Sean Hannity. In the Senate, South Carolina’s Jim DeMint in particular has distinguished himself as a purveyor of false information, and has promised anti-gay groups that he will launch a filibuster against the bill.

The Religious Right’s campaign of distortions and outright lies about the hate crimes bill has been unfolding all year and has been well-documented by RightWingWatch.org and others; in April, we published “Right Wing Sounds False Alarm on Hate Crimes Legislation.”

During Senate debate we hope that journalists and public officials will not treat the Right’s false charges as if they represented one-half of a real policy debate on the legislation. The Right’s wild allegations should be treated instead as evidence of the desperation and utter lack of credibility on the part of those who are opposed to extending legal protections to LGBT Americans.


It would take many pages to compile the lies and fear-mongering of the Right on the hate crimes bill. This memo will highlight some representative examples from the past 10 weeks or so, and compile some of the readily available documentation that Religious Right leaders are lying to the media, to Members of Congress, and to their own supporters.

Big Lie Number One: The End of Religious Liberty

For years, Religious Right leaders have been claiming that adding protections based on sexual orientation to the federal hate crimes bill would mean an end to free speech and religious liberty in America. It’s never been true.

In fact, the current House and Senate hate crimes bills have such clear and explicit protections for First Amendment speech, it’s hard to know how right-wing leaders can continue to make the argument with a straight face. But make them they do. Here are just a few recent examples:

* In mid-June, more than 60 people, including pretty much all the major Religious Right figures and friends like Tom DeLay, sent a letter to Senators claiming that the hate crimes bill would criminalize preaching the Gospel and would, among other evils, “Silence the moral voice of the Church," “Punish principled dissent from the homosexual agenda," and “Be a savage and perhaps fatal blow to First Amendment freedom of expression."

* Janet Porter, a leading supporter of Mike Huckabee’s presidential bid, helped boost a Flag Day (Sunday, June 14) effort involving pastors “standing for freedom by exposing this dangerous bill that could land them in jail for the ‘crime’ of reading from Romans.” Porter, a WorldNetDaily columnist, was also behind a letter writing campaign to the Hill; its claims to have sent 700,000 letters sounds impressive until you read that people paid a lump sum to have 100 letters (one to each senator) generated over their name.


* The American Family Association’s Donald Wildmon sent activists an alert in late June under a headline that screamed, “The ‘Hate Crimes’ bill will take away our religious freedoms.”

* Pat Robertson recently told viewers of his 700 Club show that the bill would prevent pastors from preaching against homosexuality, claiming that “if anybody speaks out about homosexuality, says it’s a sin, says its wrong, says it’s against the Bible, that individual would be charged with a quote, hate crime.”

* On the eve of the House bill’s passage, GOP Representatives Louie Gohmert of Texas and Trent Franks of Arizona joined Bishop Harry Jackson and spokespeople from the Traditional Values Coalition and Concerned Women for America to claim that preaching against homosexuality would become a hate crime. Talking points handed out by Rep. Louie Gohmert’s staff claimed that “The Hate Crimes bill creates a new Federal “Thought Crime.”

The Truth: Religious Liberty and Free Speech Carefully, Clearly, Explicitly Protected

As we and others have pointed out repeatedly, it could not be clearer that the hate crimes bills moving through Congress apply only when violent hate crimes have been committed against individuals. They have nothing to do with regulating speaking or preaching, which are protected by the First Amendment. But just to be clear, both House and Senate versions of the legislation include clear and explicit affirmations for speech and religious teaching. Here’s language from the bill about to be taken up in the Senate:

CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTIONS- Nothing in this Act shall be construed to prohibit any constitutionally protected speech, expressive conduct or activities (regardless of whether compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief), including the exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment and peaceful picketing or demonstration. The Constitution does not protect speech, conduct or activities consisting of planning for, conspiring to commit, or committing an act of violence.

FREE EXPRESSION- Nothing in this Act shall be construed to allow prosecution based solely upon an individual's expression of racial, religious, political, or other beliefs or solely upon an individual's membership in a group advocating or espousing such beliefs.

Faced with that clear language, Religious Right leaders claim that some judge will somehow interpret the language to allow for prosecution of preachers if some member of their congregation responds to an anti-gay sermon by committing an act of violence. But unless a preacher is explicitly urging his parishioners to commit acts of violence against their gay neighbors, that scenario is nothing but the Right’s paranoid fantasy.

As we pointed out in April, stories cited by right-wing leaders as evidence that their fears are justified are mostly from other countries, which do not enjoy the strong free speech and religious liberty protections granted by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And the American examples they cite, such as the supposed persecution of Christian grandmothers for sharing the gospel with gay people, don’t hold up to scrutiny.

As Right Wing Watch has noted:

The idea that hate crimes laws infringe free speech is ludicrous. Hate crimes protections for race and religion have existed for over a decade and racist or anti-religious speech has not been made illegal and nobody has been charged with a hate crime for engaging in such speech.

Big Lie Number 2: Hate Crimes Bill as ‘Pedophile Protection Act’

Last month, in “Free Speech, Irresponsible Speech, and the Climate of Intolerance,” we noted:

One appalling development has been the return to public discourse of public officials openly equating gay rights with support for pedophilia, a false and hugely inflammatory charge that seemed to have faded somewhat as equality for gay people gained support among the American public. But in their desperation to defeat hate crimes legislation, Members of Congress joined James Dobson and other Religious Right leaders insisting that Democrats were giving rights to pedophiles at the expense of Christians. One WorldNetDaily story used the phrase “Pedophile Protection Act” no fewer than four times in referring to federal hate crimes legislation under consideration, once quoting Rep. Louis Gohmert of Texas using the term.

Accusations that the gay rights movement is a threat to children have typically been made in sleazy insinuations like this one from Donald Wildmon’s Speechless: Silencing the Christians:

Hate crimes laws have very little to do with hate or with crime. The primary goal of these laws is to silence Christians who object morally to sodomy and who object politically to the attempt of the secularist elite to dominate our culture and to subject our children to their own beliefs and to their own desires.

But in recent months they have gone well beyond insinuation to claim that a majority of the House of Representatives voted to grant pedophiles greater legal protections than Christians in America. Here’s a characterization by the Traditional Values Coalition on the eve of the House vote: “the ‘moral’ of this law, if it has one, is that child molesters and those who only ‘date’ dead people need to be protected but is open season on pastors and churchgoers.”

People like Sean Hannity find this shocking and unbelievable. Of course it’s not believable because it is not true. But it gets repeated because supposedly credible people, like Members of Congress, repeat the claim.

Rep. Steve King of Iowa has emerged as the King of Congressional Demagogues on the issue . On a May 14 radio show with Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, King claimed: “we have a record roll call vote that shows every Democrat on the Judiciary Committee voting to have pedophiles protected.”

Right-wing media is now filled with variations on a bogus hypothetical scenario: that a woman who pushes away an exhibitionist, or a person who steps in to defend their daughter or nephew from a child molester, would be sent to jail for ten years under the hate crimes law.

The Truth: Pedophilia is in no way protected by the hate crimes bill.

Rep. King and his friends are lying. The Right’s claims and the label they have slapped on the hate crimes bill – “Pedophile Protection Act” – are based on falsehood layered upon falsehood.

The first falsehood is that because the bill does not include an explicit definition of “sexual orientation,” the term would be used to cover, depending on which Religious Right figure is speaking at any moment, either a list of 30 “paraphilias” listed in the American Psychicatric Association’s current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or a much larger list of “547 sexual deviancies,” as claimed by radio host Janet Porter and RightMarch.com PAC. The ever-memorable Pat Robertson suggested that it might protect “people who have sex with ducks.”

The second falsehood is that the House Judiciary Committee, by rejecting an inflammatory and unnecessary amendment by the grandstanding Rep. King, was somehow voting to extend new legal protections to pedophiles.

Here’s the simple fact regarding a definition of sexual orientation: Pedophilia is not a sexual orientation by anyone’s definition – only in the imagination of Religious Right organizations and political figures trying to derail the legislation with the most inflammatory charge they can come up with. As Rep. Tammy Baldwin pointed out during debate, sexual orientation is explicitly defined in the federal hate crimes statistics act as “consensual heterosexuality and homosexuality. And in spite of the Right’s claims about paraphilias, the American Psychiatric Association defines sexual orientation very clearly as homosexuality, heterosexuality, or bisexuality.

Jim Burroway, who blogs at boxturtlebulletin, interviewed Dr. Jack Drescher, a member of the APA’s DSM-V Workgroup on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders, who, asked about the Right’s claims regarding the hate crimes bill, said:

Pedophilia is not a sexual orientation, nor would pedophiles be covered by a law protecting people for their sexual orientation. Religious social conservatives who oppose gay rights are using terms that sound like science, as opposed to actual science, to make unwarranted and malicious comparisons between homosexuality and pedophilia. Not only is this scare tactic untruthful, it reveals how little respect some religious conservative leaders have for the intelligence of the people they are trying to persuade.

And regarding Rep. King’s claims – touted by folks like Sean Hannity – that House Democrats supposedly voted to extend protection to pedophiles in the bill, here’s what really happened. While legislation was being considered in the House Judiciary Committee, Republicans introduced a series of amendments that were designed to distort the intent of the legislation and create an opportunity for divisive debate. Among them was an amendment by Rep. King to exempt pedophilia from the legislation. As Rep. Baldwin made clear during the mark-up of the legislation, the amendment was not necessary, because sexual orientation is defined in federal law as heterosexuality or homosexuality, and the act already had nothing to do with peodphilia. King’s amendment was one of a series of grandstanding efforts voted down by Democrats.

Strange Auxiliary Lie: Hate Crimes Bill Would Target Pro-Life Military Personnel

The Religious Right has even tried to claim that hate crimes legislation would somehow be used to target pro-life military personnel. This one is so bizarre and convoluted that it merits little attention on the substance. It does, however, shed light on the credibility of Focus on the Family and other groups desperately grasping for ways to slow the momentum of hate crimes legislation. Here’s a claim from Focus on the Family:

House Hate-Crimes Bill May Target Pro-Life Servicemen and Women

Senate Republicans have called a hearing Thursday to discuss proposed hate-crimes legislation. The contentious language would elevate some victims of violent crimes over others.

The U.S. House of Representatives has already passed a hate-crimes bill, and is trying to take the concept one step further.

Florida Congressman Alcee Hastings has added language that would ban the recruitment, enlistment or retention of military personnel affiliated with "hate groups." Just a month ago, the Department of Homeland Security issued a study listing pro-life advocates as potential national security threats.

And here’s how Right Wing Watch dispatched it:

Does this make any sense at all? Focus is claiming that passage of hate crimes legislation will somehow prevent anti-choice individuals from joining the military by stirring together three completely separate issues into one steaming mass of nonsense.


First of all, hate crimes legislation has already passed in the House and contains no such language regarding military recruitment, nor does the version being debated in the Senate. And considering that the legislation has already passed in the House, there is no way that Rep. Hastings could have "added language" to it.

Secondly, what Hastings has done is add an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 that "would prohibit the recruitment, enlistment, or retention of individuals associated or affiliated with groups associated with hate-related violence against groups or persons or the United States government." The language of the amendment can be found here [PDF] and defines "hate groups" as groups that advocate violence against others based on race, religion, or ethnicity, engage in criminal activity, or advocate armed revolution against the government.

Thirdly, these two things have nothing to do with one another and neither has anything to do with the recent Department of Homeland Security report.

Yet, somehow Focus on the Family's Steve Jordahl has managed to combine all three of these issues into one claim that hate crimes legislation would somehow lead to pro-life members of the military being targeted. And even though this claim is utterly incoherent and fundamentally nonsensical, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see it get picked up by others in the right-wing echo chamber and quickly establish itself as part of the narrative.

More resources on hate crimes

People For the American Way has compiled a resource page on the hate crimes bill which includes links to several letters to Congress from progressive African American clergy debunking right-wing lies and calling for the bill’s passage.